the color of...

"She wore a gown the colour of

and


and a necklace of broken promises and regrets."

— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

http://www.thecolorof.com/

heartache

"A little box...to be more precise it was the colour of heartache."
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

calligra-not.

Compared to the Rotterdam calligraphy we just saw, modern script-crafting education looks embarrassingly juvenile. 

And my own attempts at inked script look conspicuously devoid of adornment.

These were some experiments at studio for a Valentine's promotion. I love finding any excuse to play with messy media and play with lettering by hand. But perhaps it's time to work more on my loops and swirls and swooshes and curly-cues.

calligra-whaaaat?

A selection of inspiring works of artistic hand-lettering, from Jan Tschichold's book Treasury of Calligraphy. Watch out, these kids are craaaaazy!

It looks like lace.

Strangely modern in its three-dimensionality.

Swooping! Just look at that dynamic composition!

Whaaaaaaat is this?????

My absolute favourites are these pieces coming out of Rotterdam. Those Dutch are craaaazy with the quill!

Very stylistically different. Look at those dramatic diagonals!

A zoo! Someone was getting creative. Or bored.

hey ho hey hey! dancing thistles.

Aaaaaw, just look at them! You can't help but want to snuggle these be-jiggering flowers, prickles and all!

Prickles

A selection of sketches playing with the iconography of the Scottish thistle. I saw many fantastic renditions of the thistle while living in Scotland, but also many many horrendous ones.

((One of the sketches above may or may not have been slightly inspired by Disney's Fantasia's dancing Russian flowers...))

real greenbacks

Confession: I will never love the new American currency designs as I do the old ones from my childhood, the real greenbacks, without all these fancy colors and odd embellishments, this "Monopoly money" as Grandmother would have said.